Contramaestre is a mirror in which everyone’s unconscious is reflected. The city shapes aspects of ourselves that we cannot see with the naked eye. And it does so in an amplified way, collectively, in a big way. You see yourself in that mirror even in your dreams of other lands. For some reason my soul chose Contramaestre as its hometown, it chose it as a womb, the collective container womb, to which we all return sooner or later.
The Contramaestrian lives in permanent struggle, he is a warrior, someone who breathes conflict. Like all survivors, he thinks that life is difficult, he believes that he has to make an effort to obtain everything he desires. And he always desires. He works, he gets into debt to have the latest telephone, so that his children go to the best school, to get the degree, the car, the little house.
The Contramaestrian is never satisfied. They are rebels who always find a cause to defend, no matter if that cause is near or far. They do not rest until they get it and a new cause appears. Stress and anguish is a cocktail that most people living in Contramaestre drink on a daily basis. They wash it down with pills or alcohol. Contramaestre’s son never sits still. There is always something new to do, build, study, serve, party, dance, sing, laugh.
They don’t rest, they don’t relax, they don’t sleep. Finding calm in this city is a challenge that few accept and even fewer achieve. For this reason, the soul of the city is frenetic, its hunger is voracious and never satisfies its permanent need to be heard.
The hometown is the origin from which we cannot detach ourselves, even if we wanted to. It is the starting point from which our ship departs. It is a mirror, but it is not a fixed mirror, but a kaleidoscope. The hometown is a great kaleidoscope where images and situations constantly appear and will always repeat themselves, but never in the same way. Each person interprets each of the images differently, according to what is programmed in his or her unconscious.
I have slipped into its center to see inside my hometown, Contramaestre. I have also seen the demons that surround it, reptiles that feed on those who live in it. They seem to have made it to suit them: hot sun and cold blood. Most of the people who live in Contramaestre act cold-blooded, they don’t feel, they only survive by using their primary brain to think. But the soul of the city is found in its center, where its rebellious heart beats, the heart of the creators, of the artists. The soul of the city is the one that has the answers to what we have been, what we are and what we will be.
The hometown is like the mother, but it is not the mother. The hometown is the artificial womb, it is what man has created as a representation of the mother, as an ideal. The hometown functions as that container womb that gives us meaning as individuals first, because it is the space where we develop our personality, and then as a collective, as a living organism capable of forming intelligent communities.
What happens inside the city? By telling yourself your story, you will understand why you were born where you were born.
My hometown, Contramaestre, is a city on the banks of the river of the same name built stimulated by the railroad. We only have to stand in the center of Contramaestre for a moment and observe. You have to be crazy or like Don Quixote to believe that it is possible to engender any artistic process in the conditions of sensory and mental saturation that exist in the center. The University of the Arts is a water lily.
If you are an artist, a creator, Contramaestre will push you to be its voice, to sing to it, to read to it, to tell it, to express it the way you know how.
The city demands that you become one of its characters, one of the illusions that will make it vibrate. Then, you will realize that you can be whatever the city wants you to be. Contramaestre will incite your senses to dance it, to drink it, to enjoy it, to fall in love with it and penetrate it. But, let me tell you, this city is one of those lovers that the next day do not call and that, to see them again, you have to do some trick. In appearance, the city changes, but only in appearance. Deep down, it is always the same.
His personality is reinforced over time. Contramaestre doesn’t grow, he doesn’t evolve. It is you who evolves if you learn to swim in its turbulent waters. If you understand the illusion that is the city, maybe you can get out of it.
